18
by Karanguni
Summary: Tim hits 18; the family celebrates, in its own way. Mild slash.


'I never understood,' Tim points out objectively, 'why I had to inherit Dick's sense of fashion.' His old Robin suit stays, for posterity's sake and Bruce's own brand of nostalgia, in one of the many storage facilities they have in the cave. It stays there, green and yellow and red and painful to recall. Tim's new costume is a painful reminder in its own way, but for reasons more personal.

It is as it should be. Bruce's own sensibilities work in a similar vein.

'Mm,' Batman says, from the console. It's a typical response, but it does indicate that Bruce is listening, somewhere down there. Talking now isn't quite the lost cause it can be when Batman is just _Batman_.

Tim finishes his set on the rings - he feels clumsy on them - and heads to the Redbird. One of the advantages of living the Wayne life: no more skateboards. No more beaten up and masquerading relics. Just burnished metal and constant horsepower. He maintains his own 'cycles the way Dick tends to come home to manage the gymnastics equipment. 'I'll be taking next Wednesday off,' Tim ventures, wiping down his hands on a rag. Stephanie used to say that he has "a pair on him" for daring to _tell_ Bruce what he wants as opposed to asking, but Tim's modus operandi rests on the assumption that if he _were_ to ask, he's likely to dislike the answer. Statements give him greater leverage with negotiation.

'Your eighteenth.' Bruce states the obvious.

'You'll let me off if I say that I don't exactly want any presents this year,' Tim says, dry. On his seventeenth the world kept trying to end. On his sixteenth, Bruce thought it would be a good idea to put him through a rite of passage. Tim liked neither. What he _would_ like is to be far, far away from the family. They're unbearably awkward, and unconscionably guilty over the things they both do and do not do.

'Noted,' Bruce replies. 'Take the day.'

'Mm,' Tim says, and they spend the three to four o'clock hour working, in silence and good company. The calm is present enough for Tim, after a year of nothing much other than chaos.

* * *

Wednesday rolls around, drab and grey and threatening rain. Tim stays in his part of the manor Alfred's been by, which means that the first of his expected gifts have arrived. Breakfast, done the way Tim likes it, with a side-order of some of the unhealthiest fries that Tim will allow himself and that Alfred will permit in the kitchen.

Tim grins, snags the juice, and hums his way through a round of meditation and then a check on the computers. Nothing in the work email, new update on xkcd, and then a new message in his personal inbox that warps his screen into a video message from Babs. Oracle waves. Tim waves back at one of the cameras that he lets her keep in his room. They talk. Babs doesn't bother with much of a celebratory attitude "You're alive, boy wonder, and still kicking."

Dick's present is a message on Tim's cell. '_Little brother, want to do Manhattan? Free tonight. Call!_' Tim debates taking the drive down the modifications from last night could bear with some testing, and he wouldnt mind the transit. Dick hasn't exactly been around much lately, and maybe being eighteen will change _something_ in their status quo. Or so Tim wants to think.

He's still debating the pros and cons of spending time with the older wing when he gets to his living room, and finds a white box on the coffee table. There's a note on top, in Bruce's signature half-scrawl, half-typewrite. _Not while on duty, but I expect you might appreciate them at other times._

Tim opens it up and finds the sexiest pair of boots he's seen since he first got his drilling on traction versus comfort versus distraction. This one has an edging of silver through the heel and waterproofing and absolutely no tracers or advanced tech or any of the metal tipping at the toes which Tim has come to loathe over the years.

There's another short note on the inside. _No. You do not have to suffer Dick's sartorial failings. Happy birthday. - B._

Heh. Maybe he does want to do Manhattan.

Showing off is only part of it.

But a pretty big part.


End file.
